The details of Church life which we gather from the Pauline Epistles, particularly as to the Church at Corinth, amply confirm what has been said (e.g. Ph 4^^*, 1 Co 1"; the numerous salutations to women in Ro 16). Paul speaks of Phoebe as a 'deaconess' of the Church at Cenchrece (Ro 16'), in terms that suggest her ability and will to give
WOMAN
WOMAN
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generous help to poorer Christians. The deacon- esses of wliom Pliny speaks, early fti the L'nii cent. {Ep. X. 90), were shivo girls. It is clear that women equally witli men could he regariled as the organs of the prophetic spirit in the Corinthian Churcli (cf. Pri.scilla and Ma.\imilhi among the Mon- tanists), since Paul desires that every woman praying or prophesying shall Iiave her head veiled (1 Co 11°). This is a corollary from the admission of women into the Church, since Christian fellow- sliip is es.sentially constituted by the gift of the Spirit (Ro 8"). To this proof of woman's religious equality with man there seems to be no necessary contradiction in the fact that Paul a little later (1 Co 14**) forbids women to speak {\a\df) in the churches (see, however, the Commentaries on this disputed passage) ; the contrast simply shows that the Spirit could override ordinary social conven- tions (cf. the prophesying of tlie four daughters f Philip the evangelist, Ac 21' ; the virginity of these, as of the daughters named in 1 Co 7^", does not yet constitute an 'order'). In the Pastoral Epistles we tind a regular roll of 'widows' (see art. Widows), who have provision made for them by the Church (1 Ti 5"- ; cf. Ac 6' 9»»--"). Thus Cliristianity met the physical needs of a cla.ss specially likely to sutler (cf. E. Renan, Les Ap6tres, Paris, 186(3, p. 122), as it met the spiritual needs of women in general.
3. The place of women in marriage gained a higher interpretation. The Greek world is char- acterized by the practical absence of family life in the best sense ; the Greek wife lived in seclusion and ignorance. ' The courtesan was the one free woman of Athens' (Lecky, op. cit., ii. 293). The Roman matron had indeed held a high place in the ancient Roman home, though she [lassed into the absolute legal power of her husband by the older type of religious marriage. Under the early Roman Empire, the position of married women was often one of social and legal independence (Friedliinder, Roman Life and Manners, Eng. tr., i. 236), but this was the outcome of the newer type of marriage as a civil contract ; its laxity of divorce and the break-u)) of the older family life show its peculiar perils. Roman morality, in fact, broke down, here as elsewhere, because it had not found its reinforce- ment and transfiguration in religion (cf. W. Warde Fowler, The Eeligious Experience of the Roman People, London, 1911, p. 466). It was in the iden- tification of morality and religion that the strength of Judaism lay. The Jewish wife, it is true, held a leg.al position decidedly inferior to that of the husband. But the relationship was redeemed by the quality of the humanity which was so typical a product of the OT religion. Consequently, the family life of the Hebrew-Jewish people, in some measure, prepared for the applications of the prin- ciple of woman's religious equality made by apos- tolic Christianity (cf. the fine portrait of the 'virtuous woman' in Pr 31'°'-). What these were may be seen from Paul's statement of the mutual relationship of husband and wife (Eph 5--'^^). Not only is the spirit of that relationship to be the new law of love, but the relationship itself is made sacramental by its comparison with that existing between Christ and the Church. We can hardly exaggerate the gulf that separates this idea of mar- riage from that in which the relationship is prim- arily physical. Indeed, the religious disabilities of women .seem to rest, at least in part, on primi- tive sexual tabus (cf. W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites^, Lonilon, 1894, [ip. 299 n., 379 n. ; A. E. Crawley, The Mi/stie Rosr., London, 1902, p. 52). Christianity, in principle, if not always in practice, has lifted woman above the sexual level, at which her chief raison dCHre is the gratification of man's passions, and has joined her
personality to his, as contributory to a comni<in social life. Marriage is to be Iicid in honoui among all (lie 13'; cf. 1 Ti 4'). Paul, indeed, pre fers celibacy because of the peculiar conditions of the time {i.e. on eschatological grunncls). But he recognizes both the innocence of the sexual tie and the equal claims of the man and the wonuin in regard to it (I Co 7^') — surely a disproof of any ' asceticism ' in the ordinary sense of the w ord. The emphasis on chastity (6™-, Eph 5^), so chnrac- terislic of early Christian ethics, is based on the principle that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Co 6'"); the condemnation of extra- marital sexual relationships is the natural com- l)lementof the attitude to marriage itself (1 Til 4'). The moral tie that unites the Christian even to an unbelieving p.artner is fully recognized (1 Co 7'-'-) ; the unbelieving hu.sband may be won by the con- duct of the Christian wife (1 P 3'), which is a better adornment than that of outward apparel (v.^'- ; cf. 1 Ti 2''). The ideals of Christianity in the 1st cent, in regard to womanly conduct are well summarized in the exhortation of Clement of Rome: 'Let us gui<le our women toward that which is good : let them show forth their lovely disposition of purity ; let them prove their sincere atlection of gentleness; let them make manifest the moderation of their tongue through their silence ; let them show their love, not in factious preferences but without partiality towards all them that fear God, in holiness' (ao Cor. xxi. 7, Tlie Apostolic Fathers, tr. J. B. Lightfoot, London, 1891 ; cf. Tit 2^').